To listen to Mandalit del Barco's appreciation of Jenni Rivera's life and career, as heard on All Things Considered, click the audio link.

Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera died Sunday in an airplane that crashed in the early hours of the morning in Toluca, west of Mexico's capital. The legendary musician, household name and feminist presence in the Latin music scene was 43.

In her song "The Ovaries," Rivera ends with the phrase, "The ovaries I carry ... they are big ones!" It might sound crass, but in a culture in which we continue to grapple with sexism, where the pathology of machismo permeates the very language (insults in Spanish often involve comparisons to or violence against women; braggadocio orbits around huevos — a man's genitalia), Rivera was a lyrical guerrilla fighter.

In a phone call, Latin culture writer Ernesto Lechner told me Rivera was subversive to the core, pointing to her song "De Contrabando." "She refuses to be the subservient lover," Lechner said. "She's hitting on the guy. She's the player; she's making the moves." Sample lyrics: "Sorry if I'm too forward, but I've liked you for a while now, and even though I know you are with someone, we could be discreet and see each other once in a while."

Latin music has lost a powerful vocalist; Latin women lost a powerful feminist icon, a survivor and advocate. Rivera became pregnant with her first child at 15 and suffered brutal domestic violence at the hands of her teenage sweetheart, Trinidad Marin. In an interlude on her 2007 album, Mi Vida Loca, Rivera says: "I lived it. I suffered it. I endured it. And I got tired of it. In the end, I sent him to jail." (In 2007 Marin was sentenced to 31 years in prison for the molestation of Rivera's at-the-time-underage daughter and sister.)The experience led her to become a spokeswoman for the National Coalition Against Battered Women and Domestic Violence in Los Angeles. And while she is certainly not the first female or Latin musician to reappropriate sexist idioms and take a stance against female oppression, she was an unparalleled female star in the male dominated banda universe.

No doubt comparisons will be drawn to another female Mexican music icon gone before her time — Selena. But I see as many, if not more, parallels with legendary Mexican singer Paquita la del Barrio, who also emerged from teen pregnancy and abuse with songs about survival, empowerment and, yes, romantic love. And in a world in which female entertainers are oversexualized to sell records, Rivera never stopped being pure class: She embraced her curvaceous body but always remained "La Diva de la Banda." Fans adored her.

Mandalit del Barco reported Monday that fans in Los Angeles have been paying tribute (hear her story at the audio link). Vernice Cornejo, 26, was among those who stopped to pay their respects and sing their favorite Jenni Rivera songs. Cornejo said besides celebrating hard-drinking women who are loud and proud, Rivera was a role model for Latinas in other ways. "We go through a lot of physical abuse, mental abuse, and she said she herself went through it," Cornejo told del Barco. "She tried hard to make us look good."

The daughter of Mexican immigrants who created a musical dynasty from scratch, Rivera achieved fame as a banda musician (a regional Mexican style with brass instrumentation as a centerpiece). She was enormously successful: According to Billboard she sold 15 million records, and she had multiple Latin Grammy nominations, proving that female banda fans yearned for a woman's perspective.

Rivera was also a boundary pusher — she not only explored themes of empowered women but also successfully delved into pop, narco-corridos (Mexican drug ballads) and love songs. She recently crossed over into new audiences with her reality show I Love Jenni on Mun2, which portrayed her life as a music star, a mother and a grandmother. She was also a judge on Mexico's version of The Voice and had recently signed a deal with ABC to star in her own scripted television show.

Rivera's "Cuando Muere Una Dama" ("When A Lady Dies"), released years ago, eerily requests that her fans, friends and family celebrate, rather than mourn, her death — because, she clarifies, she had a very good life: "I was a strong guerrilla fighter, who for her children fought. ... The people's daughter is gone, the woman with the big balls. ... Don't miss me bosses, your rebel daughter lives on forever."

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Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

At the age of 43, Jenni Rivera was an institution in Spanish language entertainment. She was a hugely popular singer, a reality television star and a producer of several TV shows. Jenni Rivera was preparing to cross over to English language media when she died last night. She just finished a concert in Monterey when her plane went down in Northern Mexico. NPR's Mandalit del Barco has an appreciation.

MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Many of Jenni Rivera's fans in Southern California have been leaving flowers and candles outside her family's homes and in Plaza Mexico, a shopping mall in the L.A. suburb of Lynwood. Twenty-six-year old Vernice Cornejo stopped by to pay her respects by singing her favorite Jenni Rivera song.

VERNICE CORNEJO: (Singing foreign language)

BARCO: Cornejo says even though the song is about a hardworking, hard-drinking woman, Rivera was a role model for her fans.

CORNEJO: Hispanic women, we go through a lot of physical abuse, mental abuse. And she actually said it herself as she went through it, and she wanted us to see in her that she made it so we could've made it just the way she made it.

BARCO: Rivera became popular for singing about her own troubles, the domestic violence she suffered as a young woman, her struggles with weight, being a single mother and her three failed marriages.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA GRAN SENORA")

JENNI RIVERA: (Singing foreign language)

BARCO: Jenni Rivera was known as the diva of banda music, a brass polka style popularized in Northern Mexico and with Mexican immigrants in the U.S. She was born in Long Beach, California, had her first child when she was 16, got a degree in business administration and tried her hand at real estate. But her family was becoming a Mexican-American musical dynasty. Her four brothers, including superstar Lupillo Rivera, all perform. They grew up going to swap meets where their father, Pedro Rivera, started his music business selling mixtapes. Pedro eventually launched his own record label producing narcocorridos, ballads celebrating Mexican drug traffickers. Outside his home last night, Rivera thanked fans and asked them to remember his daughter as she was, straight with the world.

PEDRO RIVERA: (Speaking foreign language)

BARCO: Jenni Rivera made her first album in 1992 and launched her television career with a reality show three years ago.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "I LOVE JENNI")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing) Yeah, she's a superstar, and we can never get enough. We all love Jenni. Oh, Jenni, I love Jenni.

BARCO: Cameras caught the soap opera of Jenni Rivera's life, her antics and those of her five children and grandchildren. Viewers watched her struggle to raise her kids, remarry and even go through a breast cancer scare.

RIVERA: I was trying still to be strong, but if anybody were to see me, they'd know that I was in pain. I just wasn't la diva de la banda, Jenni Rivera.

BARCO: She talked about the show with Los Angeles station KTLA.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED INTERVIEW)

RIVERA: My fans love reality. They love for you - for me to be who I am. I'm very transparent. I try to be authentic and genuine with them.

BARCO: "I Love Jenni" was so popular, it even spawned a spinoff starring Rivera's oldest daughter Chiquis. And Jenni caught the attention of ABC TV, which was developing a comedy around her about a bicultural, bilingual middle-class single mother and business owner, just like Jenni Rivera herself. Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.